That Little Wood Pellet Company is Getting a Whole Lot Bigger

By Donna Moxley on Tuesday, September 5, 2006.

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The autumn chill is already in the air in New Hampshire.

And residents across the state are preparing to turn on the furnace once again.

Some homeowners planned ahead and locked in a price for heating fuel.

Others are just girding themselves for that first big utility bill.

But high fuel prices aren't bad for everyone.

A once-struggling wood pellet company in Jaffrey is now scrambling to keep up with demand.

The Keene Sentinel's Donna Moxley reports:

(warehouse echo/quiet)
The warehouse at New England Wood Pellet in Jaffrey echoes with the footsteps of visitors.
The floor is clean and nearly empty.
Stacked up against two far walls are some one-ton pallets of wood pellets--a day or two worth of inventory.
23:00-24:15 (truck sound comes in)
The warehouse isn't empty due to lack of production.
Company officials say their factory runs 24 hours a day compressing wood into pellets to be used as heating fuel.
The pellets head out to distributors almost as quickly as they're made, trying to keep up with customer demand.
Company officials say between 25 and 30 truckloads a day leave the factoryâ€¦.each filled with 26 tons of pellets.
19:58 "this is all part of a shift, a transition that is coming very rapidly as a result of high energy costs and shortages in conventional energy ..."
That's Charlie Niebling, general manager for procurement at New England Wood Pellet.
"and in the next 10 or 15 years weâ€™re going to see an incredible cultural economic social transition in this country toward renewables. Itâ€™s inevitable."
With worried consumers ordering heating fuel in the summer, the company expects demand will only heat up as the weather cools.
In order to meet the demand, New England Wood Pellet has broken ground on a new packaging and distribution plant in Palmer, Massachusetts.
That facility will receive more than 82-thousand tons of pellets coming from British Columbia to help meet demand in the northeast.
That business will more than double the company's current capacity.
And owner Steve Walker says his company is getting a great deal of attention.
30:10 "It keeps attracting new investors, in fact we have a lot more investors than we know what to do with right now. Energy just seems to be the latest rave. I mean, when I was STARVING for cash, a few years ago â€“ now weâ€™re really in great shape and itâ€™s really exciting."
Walker moved his young business to Jaffrey from Massachusetts in 1998
At that time oil prices had dropped to less than 15 dollars a barrel.
And the company had to depend on investors like Harriet Todd to keep afloat.
Todd was one of the first investors in New England Wood Pellet.
Now she sits on the board of directors.
44:16 "I always think itâ€™s good to do something both environmentally appropriate and perhaps get a good return on the investment as well."
Lately, she said both of those goals have been achieved.
There were times, though, when Todd thought the money would serve as only a helpful gesture to an old family friend.
45:09 "That did cross our minds â€¦ at the time, we said this will not pay our kidsâ€™ college education, but as it turned out, it probably could have."
As for Todd's desire to invest in something environmentally appropriate, wood pellets heat is touted as environmentally friendly.
Wood heat in all forms is often referred to as "carbon neutral."
And pellets can be clearner and greener than burning logs in a stove..
That's according to Eric Kingsley.
He's with Innovative Resource Solutions which supports alternative energy production.
KINGSLEY 59:07 "By design the burning of pellets produces very little ash. Pellets are very low ash. In terms of combustion, the product going in it combusts more fully and more readily than cordwood, so itâ€™s a little cleaner."
And Kingsley says he believes the biomass industry can at least double its size before it becomes unsustainable.
He points out that currently New Hampshire grows more wood than it harvests.
And with the deterioration of the paper industry in this state, there's a lot of low-grade material leftover from logging that can't otherwise be sold or used.
Sustainable energy sources, says Kingsley, canâ€™t replace all oil and natural gas use in the state.
But he adds, they can provide an alternative.
Owner Steve Walker sees a bright future for wood pellets - and his company - that involves a much larger-scale use of the product.
34:00 (Steve) "I just got back from a city in Sweden. I went to a city of 80,000, about the size of Manchester. They didnâ€™t have a drop of fossil fuel, everything, trains, cars, buildings, everything was renewable. And guess who has some of the lowest energy costs in the country? And itâ€™s all carbon neutral."
The Palmer, Massachusetts distribution plant is expected to open in September.
But New England Wood Pellet isn't stopping there.
The company is building another pellet manufacturing plant in upstate New York in the town of Schuyler.
The company plans to produce another 100 thousand tons of pellets there.
Walker cagily says it plans construction of another plant at an undisclosed location.
And he recently cut a ribbon in front of its new research, development and machinery fabrication division, Biofuel Energy Systems, in Jaffrey.
For NHPR News, I'm Donna Moxley